Moscow Grand Prix R03: Plenty of Excitement!

The time control in the GP tournaments is 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, 50 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game plus an additional 30 seconds per move starting from move one.

The Grand Prix returns to the Telegraph Building in central Moscow, which previously hosted the 2016 Candidates Tournament won by Sergey Karjakin of Russia.

The tournament, a nine round Swiss contest, is the second of four Grand Prix in 2017 and follow’s the Sharjah Grand Prix in February which was won by Alexander Grischuk, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in a three way tie.

The Moscow Grand Prix is sponsored by Kaspersky Lab, PhosAgro and EG Capital Partners.

Each round starts at 2PM (GMT +3).

Round 3 on 2017/05/13 at 14:00

All photos by Max Avdeev

The players have woken up in Moscow! A series of decisive games have left clear winners, and clear losers, in Russia.

Action packed today in Moscow

We will start with the draws of the day, which are the minority of the games.

First up is MVL facing against Gelfand. The Frenchman decided to repeat the variation that Giri used against the Israeli legend in round one, but Gelfand played his move order correctly this time and MVL didn't get more than a symbolic advantage as Gelfand said. The game ended soon after in a draw.

The Tomashevsky-Nakamura game seemed rather interesting, but in fact they were simply repeating a correspondence came from 2014. Tomashevsky presumably tested Nakamura's knowledge, which was clearly up to par. The game ended in a perpetual check that has been verified as completely sound by computers before the game even started.

Giri overstepped his limits trying to push an isolated queen's pawn position and found himself down a pawn. In the following interview Vallejo explains his decision to offer a draw:

However considering that the position was as follows:

Black is up a pawn and without any risking of really blundering anything. Even with a minute left on the clock surely Vallejo regrets not pushing this position.

Radjabov and Grischuk played a theoretical draw that had been seen before a few times. Their thoughts on memorization of draws:

Now to the juicy victories:

Hammer's Caro-Kann gave him a big edge

In the bottom board Inarkiev's 1.e4 was outclassed by Hammer's Caro-Kann. Strategically, already from a few moves out of the opening, Black's grasp on the kingside gave him a strong advantage. Hammer pushed his position forward and simplified into an endgame in which Black's beautiful knights were obviously much superior to an awkward bishop on f6:

Those are some pretty knights!

Mamedyarov annihilated Adams with a crushing attack:

Salem Saleh played a beautiful game today against Nepomniachtchi. He put the Russian under pressure by sacrificing a pawn to open up his dark squared bishop and the h-file, causing real problems to the opponent's king. It is not easy to play when your king is constantly in danger, and in the following position, Nepo cracked:

Salem played a great game today

Nepo has had three decisive results, all of which favored black.
Not a good thing for him, though, as he has had two whites.

Testing Svidler's knowledge of the Grunfeld isn't always a good idea. Harikrishna played into a very theoretically sharp variation, but Svidler navigated it masterfully and obtained a decisive advantage early on. Despite making his life a bit harder than it needed to be, his win was never in question.

Svidler showed, yet again, his magnificent handling of the Grunfeld

The game of the day as far as standings are concerned was certainly the Chinese duel. However, is was rather one sided. Hou Yifan's understanding of the opening was not the best, and she saw herself under pressure since then

Board one's duel was clearly in favor of Ding Liren the entire game

Ding Liren claims the lead in Moscow, half a point ahead of Svidler, Salem and Mamedyarov.

Round three games

Standings after three rounds

Click here for the full table

Round Four Pairings

Live Commentary

AGON is offering exclusive pay-per-view video of the games and live commentary. It comes in three packages: a one-time $10 fee just for Moscow GP, a full package of all the events in the World Championship cycle for $30, and a $250 package, which is the same as the $30 Base but comes with signed posters from each event.

For more information, see the widget on the main page.

Links Official tournament site Replay all games The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 14 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.